When they did get released a majority of football people looked on in horror at what was being proposed by FIFA on the basis that, it seemed, the players were given even more rights than they had been granted following the Bosman decision in December 1995.
Where was it all going to end!? FIFpro, the international players' union, did not think so however and challenged the new rules, eventually coming to an agreement with FIFA by incorporating more player friendly terms (even though the European Commission appeared to be happy with what FIFA had originally outlined).
The broad outline of the new FIFA rules has been discussed in the press so I won't go into the detail here but when they were issued there was one interesting and practical inclusion that seemed to me to be asking for trouble. This involved the imposition of transfer windows across the globe, one at the end of the season during the players' summer break and the other sometime half way through the "winter" (if you are in the northern hemisphere). Some countries already have transfer windows in place which means that players can only be transferred and Transfer Certificates (international or domestic) issued when the "transfer window" is open. It is not therefore a new idea or solution.
The national associations were given until the end of October by FIFA to come up with the dates upon which the transfer windows should operate within their specific National Association and it was intended (and this is the bit that was going to cause the problems) that from October 31, 2001 no transfers were going to be allowed to take place until the start of the transfer window.
However, instead of these dates being fixed by October 31 no such dates have been agreed or presented (as far as I am aware) by the Football Association or the Premier League or Football League. FIFA has been presented with concerns from the national associations instead and as a result of this both the national (i.e. domestic) transfer systems and the international transfer systems appear to have continued without any reference whatsoever to how the new FIFA rules were intended to operate. In particular, whilst in the first instance back in May last year it was thought the imposition of transfer windows would only affect international transfers, clearly from the new rules when they were issued they were meant to apply to domestic transfers as well. This ought to have meant that from the end of October 2001 to the opening of the transfer windows no transfers should have taken place whether international or domestically. Patently, this has not happened.
So what has happened to the transfer windows that FIFA wishes to impose. On Tuesday February 12, 2002 the UEFA Chief Executive Gerhard Aigner said (apparently contrary to the FIFA rules) that UEFA has recommended the introduction of a European transfer window to safe guard the integrity of its competitions and guarantee equal treatment of all players. He emphasised that it was a matter, though, for the National Associations whether or not to follow UEFA recent recommendation which, he said, was not an obligation.
Having attempted to contact both the Football Association and FIFA to obtain details of the ongoing discussions, no comment has yet been forthcoming. Similarly, the European Commission does not appear to wish to comment on the current situation notwithstanding the fact that the FIFA rules have not been brought into being as FIFA had indicated they would in September. Have the rules that FIFA brought in had no effect or are some operating and others not? Does this mean that we again have a number of different transfer systems operating both domestically and internationally, both inside and outside Europe or is there a global set of rules in force or not?
FIFA appeared for once to have bitten the bullet and put in place a global set of rules to deal with as many of the legal concerns of the EU and FIFpro as possible and should have been applauded for doing so. Are they going to be able to push them through, however, and if not, will the European Commission step in to enforce a more rigorous system? No one knows and at the moment no one is telling either!
